SLOVAKOCZECHIA
It might not have had the same ring, but if only they’d called the country “Slovakoczechia” maybe things would have been different. After all, the big gripe of the Slovaks was that Czechs, who made up less than half the country’s population, always came first in Czechoslovakia, starting with the name. Slovaks never even wanted to be roped in a country with the Czechs from the start. Unfortunately, Slovaks arrived a bit late for the 1919 mapmaking marathon during the Paris Peace Talks—the Czechs had held them back—and by the time they showed up in France, Czech leader Beneš had already convinced the powers-that-be that the two regions should be combined. Despite the Slovaks’ intense lobbying to make Slovakia separate, Czechoslovakia was a done deal. It’s no surprise they fell apart in 1993; Czechs and Slovaks had never exactly been good mates: even in 1918, as the First World War drew to a close, the two kept battling with each other, despite fighting on the same side.3
Although it all seems for the best now, initially the split looked like it would lead Slovakia right back to where she had come from: namely a menacing totalitarian society. That her heavy-fisted prime minister Vladimir Meciar, who negotiated the breakup, was toppled (or rather blocked) from power was less a show of democracy (he’d received most of the vote in the 2002 general election) than a result of background maneuvering by the EU and the U.S. and in this case one has to applaud their involvement.
VLADIMIR “DON’T MESS WITH ME” MECIAR
Nationalist Vladimir Meciar, who became Slovakia’s first prime minister after he sawed the country off from Czechoslovakia, made a shambles of the country, starting with the economy; he handed huge low-interest loans to his chums, while ignoring unemployment rising into the high double digits and the screaming need to reform. During his six years as prime minister, he turned at least one TV station into a Meciar-controlled vanity channel and tried to fine others who weren’t rah-rah-ing his questionable moves; he threatened to raise the newspaper tax and cut supplies of newsprint to journals that lodged criticism of his wacky leadership—and he punched a reporter who asked about the recent million-dollar renovation to his home. The former Communist stayed buddy-buddy with Russia’s power elite and thugs and negotiated cheap energy deals. His foreign relations were a mess—he offended Hungary’s leaders by making a joke about the expulsion of Hungarians after the Second World War—and his domestic politics were shadowy: head of the secret service, he may have been linked to a political kidnapping, but the witness, who was about to spill the beans, mysteriously died. In short, Meciar appeared to be marching the country into a dictatorship when the European Union and the United States noticed and began having a fit. Letting it be known that if Meciar returned to power, the doors to NATO and the EU would slam shut, the U.S. government was so worried about Meciar returning in the 1998 elections that it funded an ad campaign urging people to vote. Slovak voters brought Meciar back anyway, but his bid for power was blocked from within. Although his party actually garnered the most votes—20 percent—none of the other parties would join his to form a coalition, so he was barred from the prime minister’s chair.
With Meciar out of the picture, the new government of Mikulas Dzurinda had to sprint to get the country into the EU. That they pulled it off is remarkable. Then Dzurinda successfully song-and-danced to lure foreign investment to Slovakia. Slovakia’s economy, despite high unemployment, is now stable—like Slovenia, Slovakia looks likely to soon be invited to adopt the euro.
Problems remain, including one that haunts the neighbors as well: gypsies, known these days by the more politically correct “Roma.” They can be found all over Central Europe, but Roma are a particularly hairy issue in Slovakia, where they often live in trashy villages where the shacks have holes in the roofs. With near universal unemployment—few are willing to hire them—they were the group most affected when the government cut welfare payments in 2004; Roma responded by looting supermarkets. Numerous organizations are trying to address this ongoing social problem, but few have made much progress. One sign of hope: Roma music is all the rage across Central Europe, and Roma literature, sometimes published with EU funds, is increasingly popular too.
THE BAND FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE GYPSIES
Their culture is rich, their history tragic, and Roma have never been embraced by any European society. With their large families (women often have six children or more) and scanty education (the government often sent all Roma to schools for the retarded), the group that long ago hiked over from India has usually been left out in the cold; burglar rings of men and pickpocketing bands of mothers and children—who toss babies toward victims as a distraction while they grab wallets—have done little to polish their image. The situation is worse since the fall of Communism, leaving Roma without any socialized safety net, and with few employment opportunities. Some Romanies have headed west; a band of them made headline news by camping in a Viennese park and eating the resident swans. Now some Western European countries require special visas from Slovaks, believed to be a method to keep Roma out. The EU is funding cultural awareness projects all over the place, but the truth is Roma are Europe’s great unloved, and efforts to integrate them successfully are daunting. Roma have a harder time of it in Slovakia, where more than two-thirds are unemployed, the worst rate in Europe. In this country of high overall unemployment, Roma are increasingly targets of violence—a gang of Slovak teenagers recently broke into the house of a fifty-year-old Romany woman and beat her to death.
Slovakia also has all kinds of touchy issues from the past, including Hungary. In the 1870s, Slovakia fell under Hungarian (Magyar) rule when the Austrian Empire added “Hungary” to her name. Slovaks, forced to learn German under Austrian rule, were now forced to learn Hungarian, and the Magyars, on a nationalistic roll, were heavy-handed about Magyarization. Hungary’s attempt to stamp out Slovakian culture has never been forgiven; Czechoslovakia’s expulsion of Hungarians after the Second World War only increased the tension between the two. And the recent Slovak damming of the Danube River has Hungarians damning Slovaks from downstream.
Another tricky historical issue is the role Catholicism played in Slovakia’s past. Many Slovaks would rather forget that during World War II their country, led by Monsignor Tiso, supported Nazis and allowed them to build arms plants and work camps. Initially, many Slovaks were unaware of the priest’s collusion with the Germans, but resistance groups eventually grew from a “whispering campaign.” In 1944, the angry Slovaks rebelled against Tiso in the Slovak National Uprising, which Germans easily crushed—although that too didn’t make it into a recent history book written by a Slovak priest.
PASS THE WHITE-OUT
The Catholic Church, horribly persecuted under the Communist regime, has traditionally had a strong hand in politics in this religious country: the first calls for an independent Slovakia came from a priest (Andrej Hlinka, who put together Slovakia’s first powerful political party in 1918), and the Second World War government was led by another priest (Jozef Tiso, who cooperated with the Nazis). More recently, a priest wrote the official Slovak history textbook for schools—and kicked off a huge scandal. History of Slovakia and the Slovaks, written by Father Milan Durica, is riddled with errors and thick with whitewashing: he made Tiso’s work camps sound like health spas, even praising the fine dentists on hand and their use of gold fillings, and skipping over such facts as that some 65,000 Slovakian Jews perished after being “resettled” to other parts of Europe. Also missing from his happy-go-lucky rendition: that Tiso’s government was charging Jews for their transport to death camps. Although the Catholic Church reportedly stood by the book when it was released in 1997, the Jewish community was furious, as were others, though no group was more red-faced than the EU: they had commissioned the book, paying a reported €69,000 (about $90,000) for the historical mistake.4
Despite all the challenges, Slovakia appears to be coming into her own. Tourists are finally arriving, and after meeting with Russian President Putin in B
ratislava, perhaps President George W. Bush now knows the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia. Well, maybe.
Hot Spots
Bratislava: Okay, so it’s not Prague, but the tourist board is sure trying. Mostly built by Hungarians when they moved here en masse to escape the sixteenth-century rule of Turks in their country, the old town surrounding the hilltop castle is very lively, and students who crowd into the bars have plenty of ideas about how to turn Slovakia around, including PR to announce she exists.
Donovaly: Slovaks’ fave ski resort.
Banska Bystrica: Made rich by her silver mines, this castle town is still rich with gothic and renaissance architecture.
Rohancska Vahay: Tucked into deeply folded mountains, this area boasts six alpine lakes complete with waterfalls.
Slovakian border with Hungary: Tension here runs particularly high between Slovaks and Hungarians, who make up about 10 percent of the Slovakian population.
Castle Hill in Bratislava: Where Bush and Putin met
Hotshots
Mikulas Dzurinda: Prime Minister, 1998–present. Who knows how he did it, but earnest Dzurinda definitely wasn’t dawdling when he started reforming the place, whipping it into shape, or close enough, to earn an EU invitation for 2004 entry. Although he is of center-right Christian Democrat inclinations himself, he has liberalized the country greatly. Plenty of hurdles lie ahead, including making his people like him. Admired by the international community, Dzurinda was slapped by results from a late 2003 confidence poll: Slovaks gave him an approval rating of—ouch!—a mere 5 percent. By January 2006, he was up to 49 pecent on the approval charts.
Alexander Dubcek: Head of Czechoslovakian Communist Party, 1968. The reform-minded Communist from the east initiated the Prague Spring in 1968, and the only change he made that stuck was to give Slovakia more autonomy. Died in a 1992 car crash (some suspect foul play), which is tragic, since Dubcek, the most beloved Slovak, might have successfully filled the necessary role of strong, likeable leader.
PM Dzurinda: EU loves him, people not so sure
Ivan Gasparovik: President, 2004–present. The good news: the lawyer is not Meciar, who had been predicted to win the 2004 presidential election. The bad news: since he used to be Meciar’s right-hand man, he may turn out to be essentially a Meciar clone. Meciar, however, didn’t see it that way when he was defeated that spring; he refused to shake his former mate’s hand. No doubt Meciar feels doubly betrayed: not only did Gasparovik win, he defected to SMER, Slovakia’s new populist party, which is also the country’s most popular.
HISTORICAL HOTSHOT: JOZEF TISO (1887-1947)
Opponent of the 1919 linking of the Czech part of the region with the land held by Slovaks, Monsignor Tiso was quick to convince the Nazis he’d support them if they gave him the keys and granted Slovakia independence from Czechs. Tens of thousands of Slovak Jews were deported from Slovakia during his regime, with Auschwitz as their destination, but the man of the cloth told his people they were bound for a special homeland for Jews. The priest was tried by the Czechoslovak government in 1947, after it had returned to power and pulled Slovakia back into its loop. Tiso was found guilty of treason and collaboration with the Nazis; he was executed by hanging that same year. Some Slovaks still regard him as the true father of their country, since he first put Slovakia on the map without the “Czecho” before it, but others find his memory repulsive. A move to erect a public statue in his likeness in 2000 blew up; thus far the man stands in storage without his pedestal.
News you can read: Slovak Spectator, slovakspectator.slc, Slovakia.org
26. SLOVENIA
(Slovenija)
Most Likely to Succeed
FAST FACTS
Country: Republic of Slovenia; Republika Slovenija
Capital: Ljubljana
Government: Parliamentary democracy
Independence: 1991 (from Yugoslavia)
Population: 2,010,000 (2006 estimate)
Head of State: President Janez Drnovsek (2002)
Head of Government: Prime Minister Janez Jansa (2004)
Elections: President elected by popular vote, five-year term; prime minister elected by parliament
Name of Parliament: National Assembly; Državni Zbor
Ethnicity: 83% Slovene; 2% Croat; 2% Serb; 1% Bosniak; 12% other (2002 census)
Religion: 58% Catholic; 23% unspecified; 10% none; 4% unaffiliated; 2% Orthodox; 2% Muslim; 1% Christian
Language: 91% Slovenian; 6% Serbo-Croatian; 3% other
Literacy: 99%
Famous Exports: Strange artists, the Polka King, Laibach
Economic Big Boy: Petrol (Petrochemical); 2003 revenue: €1.211 billion (about $151 billion)1
Per Capita GDP: $21,000 (2005)
Unemployment: 6.3% (January 2006 Eurostat figure)
EU Status: Entered May 2004
Currency: Slovenian tolar
Known for: Not being Slovakia
Quick Tour
Slovenija—the thickly forested land that spills down from the Alps and snuggles up between Italy, Austria, Croatia, and Hungary—has a little bit of everything: there’s skiing in the mountains, hiking in the woods, and plenty of traditional festivals in the villages that spring up between wheat fields and vineyards. The place is crawling with subterranean caves that lead to thermal springs, gorges, and underground rivers filled with strange creatures, and the Adriatic washes her shore. But what is putting Slovenia on the world map in bold colors is capital Ljubljana, where beyond the pretty domed buildings and steeply angled red-tiled roofs lies one of Europe’s most creative scenes.
Language lesson: In Slovenian, j has the sound of a y—so the capital is pronounced “lyoo-blya-na.”
SLOVENIA VS. SLOVAKIA
The two Central European countries do have a few things in common besides identical starting letters. Both Slovenia and Slovakia entered the EU and NATO in 2004, and both their languages have the same Slavic roots. Both are very young countries. Slovenia was born in 1991, Slovakia in 1993. Beyond that, Slovenia and Slovakia have as much in common as do España and Estonia—which is to say not much. Slovenia was part of Communist Yugoslavia, which was relatively relaxed and stayed out of the Soviet Union, and Slovenia was always a prosperous state—the richest of Yugoslavia—and usually got on well with the neighbors. Slovakia, on the other hand, was one half of the former Czechoslovakia, a Soviet satellite that suffered harsh Moscow-dictated Communism. Highly agricultural, Slovakia is still relatively poor and has plenty of problems, including relations with neighboring Austria and Hungary. Slovenia, with a stable government, strong economy, and low unemployment, was the ideal candidate for EU admission; Slovakia, with her wavering government, iffy economy, and high unemployment rate, was a big EU gamble.
Easy on the eye, Slovenia has an international identity problem. Chronically confused with Slovakia, Slovenia has for centuries been plenty hard to find on the map. Prior to 1991, the country didn’t exist. Part of Yugoslavia (1945–1991), before that (1918–1945), she finished last in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Before that, everyone from Austrians to Romans, Germans to Turks, and Venetians to Hungarians called Slovenia their territory. That’s the price Slovenia paid for being a resource-rich land straddling the Adriatic and the Alps, the Balkans and the West. For most of her existence she was dragged off with the neighborhood toughs.
THE BALKANS VS. YUGOSLAVIA VS. SLOVENIA
Slovenes cringe when their country is referred to as one of the Balkans, which geographically is debatable: she lies at the northwestern edge of the Balkan peninsula, which swells between the Adriatic and Black seas and contains Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, and Bulgaria as well as the other countries of the former Yugoslavia. Mellow Slovenes never had much in common with fellow Yugoslavs, except for language similarities: geographically, Slovenia is closer to Venice than to Belgrade or Sarajevo. Nevertheless, along with the other five republics in the former Yugoslavia, she was governed by Communist Josip B
roz Tito, who kept her bound to Yugoslavia even if she didn’t really fit in.
Independent from Yugoslavia since 1991—and escaping that country’s civil war—Slovenia is the shining star of the new EU. Her economy is stable and taking off, and she’ll adopt the euro in 2007. Overnight one of Europe’s most popular holiday destinations, Slovenia is the wealthiest of new EU countries, and by every measuring stick the healthiest. With few historical hang-ups, a well-oiled economic machine, and a contented society, technologically savvy Slovenia is the most likely to soar. Here creativity is regarded as a national treasure: after all, Slovenia’s creative types, by pushing the envelope, pushed open the doors to independence.
ARTY SLOVENIA
Ljubljana is awash with art, artists, and politically driven art collectives, such as Alkatraz—a former army barracks converted into a village of artists’ studios, galleries, newspaper offices, and performance spaces. Here science meets creativity with, say, twirling robotized bugs programmed with electrical neural-like systems that respond to touch, or multimedia installations broadcasting the dangers of the media and advertising the crassness of commercialization.2 The Slovenian art scene is supported by the national government, which spends nearly 1 percent of GDP on the arts, commissioning and subsidizing projects and even sending artists to New York and across Europe to open their exhibitions—one indication of how much the country embraces those types who splash colors and sculpt words. Another show: nineteenth-century poet France Preseren and twentieth-century architect Joze Plecnik adorn Slovenian paper money.
What Every American Should Know About Europe Page 45